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8K OLED Two Years Behind 8K LCD, Claims Analyst

As I reported earlier this week, Samsung has revealed that it’s going to launch its first 8K TVs on the global market as soon as September this year. According to analyst Bob O’Brien of Display Supply Chain, though, we’re likely going to have to wait much longer than that for 8K OLED TVs to arrive in any significant numbers.

During a presentation provided to the Quantum Dot And Advanced Display Technologies Summit in Los Angeles this week, O’Brien stated that OLED manufacturing capacity for big screens - 65 and 75 inches - is lagging substantially behind the LCD manufacturing capacity for such large screens. And since the introduction of 8K is going to be focused around these larger screen sizes, LCD thus has a substantial head start in bringing 8K TVs - especially remotely affordable 8K TVs - to market.

LG did show off a spectacular 8K OLED TV at January's CES. But it was only a concept model, and 88... [+] inches across...

Photo: LG Display

In fact, during the presentation of O’Brien’s analysis, it was suggested that OLED is as much as two years behind LCD in producing real-world 8K TVs. And that even when the first 8K OLED TVs appear, 8K OLED production capacity will be far behind that of 8K LCD.

The key to all this lies in so-called Gen 10.5 panel manufacturing. This describes a fabrication process that works with huge sheets of ‘mother glass’ from which it’s possible to cut eight 65-inch screens or six 75-inch screens.

While G10.5 manufacturing is already up and running for LCD panels, with lots more G10.5 capacity coming online soon, most OLED manufacturing is currently based around the older G8.5 fabrication system, which uses smaller sheets of glass optimized for 49- and 55-inch screen sizes. With G8.5 plants, you can only get three 65-inch screens from one sheet of mother glass.

Investments have been made in building G10.5 OLED plants, but none are online yet. In fact, the first one isn’t set to start major production until 2020.

Sharp has already released a 70-inch 8K LCD monitor - though it's aimed more at commercial rather... [+] than domestic markets.

Photo: Sharp

To put some numbers on what this means, Sharp’s Sakai G10.5 LCD plant has been turning out 8 million square meters of TFT screen area since 2016. This year, that Sharp plant has been joined by another G10.5 plant owned by BOE that’s added an extra 5 million square meters of annual LCD screen area production.

This BOE facility will be upping G10.5 LCD production to 14 million square meters in 2019, while also being joined by another four million square meter G10.5 capacity production line from manufacturer China Star.

LG’s Paju G10.5 OLED production facility finally gears up in 2020, but is only expected, according to O’Brien’s figures, to produce one million square meters of OLED panels in its first year. Yet also in 2020, G10.5 LCD production will have risen to a total of 41 million square meters, thanks to yet more facilities coming online and existing plants expanding their capacity.

OLED’s G10.5 capacity is predicted to increase to 4 million square meters in 2021, and seven square million meters in 2022 - but LCD’s G10.5 production by 2022 will have hit a mammoth 74 million square meters.

How different Gen fabrication plants stack up in terms of screen size optimization.

Photo: Display Supply Chain/Corning

As well as suggesting that OLED apparently simply won’t have the production capacity to produce anywhere near as many of the big, 8K-friendly screens as LCD manufacturers will be able to, O’Brien’s presentation also touches on the potential pricing issues OLED will likely face as a result of its smaller production runs.

He doesn’t speculate on how much an 8K OLED might cost, but his presentation did contain a graphic showing that by 2021, the cost of producing 65-inch and 75-inch ‘BottomEmission’ (!) 4K OLED panels in Korea (using the inkjet system O’Brien believes will be in use by then) would be around $600 and $875 respectively. Producing 65-inch and 75-inch 8K LCD panels, on the other hand, would cost around $425 and $725 respectively.

Even 65-inch and 75-inch 8K LCD TVs that use premium Quantum Dot Enhancement Film systems are only predicted to cost around $500 and $800 to make, which is still less than the likely 2021 cost of equivalently sized 4K OLED screens.

In other words, by 2021, O’Brien’s analysis suggests that 8K LCD TVs, even 8K Quantum Dot TVs, could cost significantly less than 4K OLED TVs.

Although O’Brien doesn’t directly refer to this in his presentation, it’s also worth noting that while Samsung looks set to introduce 65-inch 8K TVs either this year or early next year, there may be production issues with fitting 8K pixel counts into 65-inch OLED TVs. Certainly the only 8K concept OLED screen LG Display has shown so far (at the CES back in January) was a massive 88 inches across.

It is, of course, possible that consumers won’t take to 8K, and feel more than happy to stick with 4K. Especially as native 8K content isn't likely to appear in the near future. In this case, potential issues with moving to volume production of 8K screens won’t become a significant issue for OLED.

O’Brien addressed 8K uptake in his presentation too, though, predicting that by as soon as 2020, 8K penetration of the TV market will hit 10% of 75-inch TVs and 5% of 65-inch TVs, with these figures rising to around 40% and 25% by 2022, and 100% and 75% by 2025.

The 8K OLED/LCD situation as currently envisaged by O’Brien could change, of course, if more G10.5 OLED production facilities are announced. Though even if this happens, building the size of plant required and gearing it up to production generally takes years rather than months.

Needless to say, if OLED manufacturers go against O’Brien’s analysis and predictions and also start talking in earnest about 8K in the next few months - maybe at the IFA technology show in September, or next January’s CES - you’ll be able to read all about it on my Forbes channel.

I've spent the past 25 years writing about the world of home entertainment technology--first at Home Cinema Choice magazine, where I became Deputy Editor, and for the

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I've spent the past 25 years writing about the world of home entertainment technology--first at Home Cinema Choice magazine, where I became Deputy Editor, and for the past 20 years on a freelance basis. In that time I'm fairly confident that I've reviewed more TVs and projectors than any other individual on the planet, as well as experiencing first-hand the rise and fall of all manner of great and not so great home entertainment technologies. I am currently a regular contributor to Trustedreviews.com, Techradar.com, Home Cinema Choice magazine, Wired, Pocket-Lint.com and, of course, Forbes.